Dir: Tomonari Nishikawa | Japan | 2 mins
"I buried a 100-foot (about 30 meters) 35mm negative film under fallen leaves alongside a country road, which was about 25km away from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station [a former meltdown site], for about 6 hours, from the sunset of June 24, 2014, to the sunrise of the following day." - Tomonari Nishikawa
Film as an act of faith. When Nishikawa buried his negative in an area which Japanese authorties had recently deemed re-habitable, his experiment relied on two factors: (i) the correct supposition that residual radiation still contaminated the populated spaces of Ōkuma and Futaba, and (ii) that the celluloid would react to this climate and perform, in acceleration, its inevitable corrosion. The resulting film not only condemns the Daiichi Power Plant and its partied safety officials (as of 27/11/17 there remains a million tons of radioactive water on-site), but elicits raw poetry from the green blots and lashes that dance across its cerulean emulsion, like algae on a great lake. Simply put, sound of a million insects, light of a thousand stars was made possible not in spite, but because of celluloid's inherent frailty, a condition that has otherwise - especially in the industrial quarter of film production - lead to its demotion as a speciality format. The damage is the film; the film is a comment on damage. From this synchrony of idea and image, sound of a million insects... enacts a proof against political injustice and a poem on celluloid's ephemeral condition. This is a perfect film, made entirely without use of a camera.
Film as an act of faith. When Nishikawa buried his negative in an area which Japanese authorties had recently deemed re-habitable, his experiment relied on two factors: (i) the correct supposition that residual radiation still contaminated the populated spaces of Ōkuma and Futaba, and (ii) that the celluloid would react to this climate and perform, in acceleration, its inevitable corrosion. The resulting film not only condemns the Daiichi Power Plant and its partied safety officials (as of 27/11/17 there remains a million tons of radioactive water on-site), but elicits raw poetry from the green blots and lashes that dance across its cerulean emulsion, like algae on a great lake. Simply put, sound of a million insects, light of a thousand stars was made possible not in spite, but because of celluloid's inherent frailty, a condition that has otherwise - especially in the industrial quarter of film production - lead to its demotion as a speciality format. The damage is the film; the film is a comment on damage. From this synchrony of idea and image, sound of a million insects... enacts a proof against political injustice and a poem on celluloid's ephemeral condition. This is a perfect film, made entirely without use of a camera.
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